Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
Dear Reader,
I thought I’d let you know how I perceive our planet is doing this Earthday. I can only see a few things from where I sit and while there is much to celebrate, there seem to be some incongruities. I thought a couple worth mentioning.
Today, our planet has about 3 billion more human mouths to feed than the day I was born. And there will be 3 billion more when my life expectancy is reached, whether I make it to that age or not. It seems that this world has reached a tipping point.
At last, Dublin latitudes are benefitting from sunlight. We see that in a bed of Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’ planted for over a decade under a canopy of trees in the front. Some passers-by have told me they are siberian bugloss ‘Jack Frost’. I’ve also had conversations with passing architects and keen gardeners who don’t know its name. They paused to admire the silver-frosted, heart-shaped leaves detailed by veins and edges of jade green. We have come to think that the perennial appearance of sprays of small, bright blue flowers are the confirmation that spring has arrived. Confusingly, after a decade of reproduction and expansion, some of the frost is disappearing. Warming?Dehybridising? Unevolving? Regressing?
I’m having an epiphany. My moment of revelation actually lasted about ninety minutes. It wasn’t the first time I was traumatised by a television. That happened first in the World at War in the scene where a chicken farmer was splashed by brains. The mood music and laconic narration of Laurence Olivier helped fix this scene forever in my memory. We were shown how the grey matter that had just been thinking terror had sullied the splendid military uniform of a man for whom executions were timed as a newsreel opportunity. Such was Himmler’s power that people slaughtered other people just to appease him. Such was the wilful ignorance in Nazi Germany that this wasn’t considered abnormal behaviour.
